<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Accidental Secrets by MaddieandChimney</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24795211">Accidental Secrets</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaddieandChimney/pseuds/MaddieandChimney'>MaddieandChimney</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>9-1-1 (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F, F/M, Mentions of Infertility, and failed IVF</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 10:54:37</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,105</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24795211</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaddieandChimney/pseuds/MaddieandChimney</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When Maddie gets pregnant as Hen and Karen are trying for a baby of their own, Chimney makes the decision to not tell his best friend so not to upset her.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Henrietta "Hen" Wilson/Karen Wilson, Maddie Buckley/Howie "Chimney" Han</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Madney One-Shots</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Accidental Secrets</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It's getting increasingly difficult; every day that passes, Chimney just wants to blurt it out but then, Hen comes in with this devastated look on her face and he doesn’t know how to get the words out. He knows his two closest friends are struggling, they keep being let down and he hates it, because they want it so badly. They want a baby together more than either of them have ever wanted anything, they’ve planned for it, gone so far as to buy stuff for this imaginary future baby that they talk about as though he or she is real.</p><p>It breaks his heart, so he can only imagine how the two women are feeling, with each piece of bad news. It’s usually Hen holding him when he cries, but he finds their roles swapped over the past few months, wrapping his arms around his best friend as he tries to soothe her. And he just doesn’t know how to get the words out.</p><p>He and Maddie haven’t even been dating a year, they hadn’t planned on getting pregnant, other than one brief conversation about whether they were ready or not. But one, extremely heated, careless night and six weeks later Maddie was in his apartment, waiting for him to come home, with six pregnancy tests on the counter in front of her and a terrified look on her face.</p><p>That was four months ago.</p><p>Buck knew, and Buck kept telling them that Hen would now be more pissed that they haven’t told her than she would that they were pregnant in the first place. But still, Chimney simply cannot find the words – how do you tell someone you love that you’re having a baby accidentally, when she’s been trying for months to achieve the same results? So, he holds her as she cries and he tells her everything is going to be okay, that there are other options to add to their already amazing family. He listens to her rant about how angry Karen is and then, when he visits their home, he listens to Karen cry about how Hen simply doesn’t understand how she feels, not entirely. Once, she tells Chimney that if Maddie were pregnant and she lost the baby, their loss would be the same but Maddie’s pain would be different from his. It was just the way it was, she had said.</p><p>He had gone home and cried that night in the arms of the woman he loved, pressing kisses to her forming bump, as he cried, so sure that the pain he would feel would be no different to what Maddie felt.</p><p>Maddie doesn’t want to keep it a secret, he knows that much, and can tell by the fact she’s suddenly avoiding going to the firehouse. She no longer turns up for family meals when invited, she stops attending the Grant-Nash house just to avoid Hen and the other members of the 118. And he hates how he feels as though he’s ruining her joy for her but he just… he doesn’t know how to say it. He didn’t know how to tell her when he first found out, and now as every week passes and they reach all these amazing hurdles, he doesn’t know how to share his happiness with his best friend.</p><p>How is he supposed to show her the sonograms he carries so preciously around with him, when she’s been let down again? How is he supposed to happily chat to her about feeling the baby kick for the first time when she’s been holding her sobbing wife all night? And how the hell is he meant to tell her that he and Maddie are having a daughter when she tells him all about this imaginary daughter she and Karen may never get?</p><p>So, he stays quiet. And he hates himself for it, he hates that Buck keeps coming into the firehouse like an excited puppy, ready to share some baby news before he remembers. He hates the fact that he can’t share the news with Bobby or Eddie because he can’t bring them into the secret, too.</p><p>It hits him horrifically when Maddie texts him that Sue and Josh and the rest of her colleagues at the dispatch centre have thrown her a baby shower, and she sends him photographs. She’s beaming at the camera, holding her twenty-two-week growing bump, and he wishes he could have that. He wishes more than anything he could share in that joy with his family. He wants to be happy for his girlfriend, he really does but it’s a struggle.</p><p>Buck knows, Albert knows, the Lees, everyone at the dispatch centre… everyone knows except the people he shares around fifty hours of his week with.</p><p>It seems as though every day that passes, it’s getting more difficult to hide exactly what’s going on – not just emotionally, but physically too. Which, he supposes, is why Maddie doesn’t often come to the firehouse but that particular day, she has no choice. She’d tried and tried to get out of it, to make endless excuses even though she <em>wanted</em> to be there more than anything. He hates that she has to hide such a huge piece of her life, of her happiness but he’s grateful when she arrives, in a top that somehow hides the bump perfectly, he can’t help but be impressed.</p><p>“I’m glad you made it.” He doesn’t miss the way she flinches when he presses his lips to her cheek, his hand instinctively hovering over her stomach before he drops it with a sigh.</p><p>“Are you?”</p><p>Ouch. But he deserves it, he’s the one who had told her maybe it would be best if she stayed away even though it was her brother’s surprise birthday meal. Maddie quickly moves away from him, and he knows to expect the cold shoulder probably for the rest of the day, watching as she walks over to her little brother and wraps her arms around his waist.</p><p>He hates that he’s hurting her, that by doing so, he’s hurting himself. Especially when he looks over at Hen and Karen and longs, so much so to tell them everything. They’re smiling though, and he hasn’t seen them so genuinely happy in a long time, he’s terrified he’ll ruin it.</p><p>It’s only when he doesn’t sit next to Maddie at the table that Hen raises an eyebrow, Karen taking one side of their friend as she takes the other. “Is everything okay with you and Maddie?”</p><p>“Oh, yeah, she just wants to be with her brother.”</p><p>“You could have sat on the other side of her,” Karen is the one to point this out, a frown on her face that matches her wife’s, and he finds himself looking between the two women who he loved so much. He could remember holding Denny when he was born, and he longed for them to have the same experience with his own child but the weeks were passing him by too quickly. With a sigh, he watches as May sits down next to the woman carrying his child, shrugging his shoulders, “May’s sitting next to her.”</p><p>And she seems much happier without him bringing the mood down next to her, as he tried to resist rubbing her stomach, talking about the amazing future they were going to have as a family. The pregnancy may have been an accident but the joy that quickly followed that one moment of complete terror, he couldn’t think of their baby as anything other than meant to be.</p><p>Chimney is not the best liar, his face pale and his hands shaking ever so slightly as he wishes no one would notice if he just snuck off. It’s one thing simply not telling Hen what was going on in his own personal life, but it’s another thing to have the secret sitting right across from him and have to lie to her face. “Are you sure you two are okay?” He can hear the concern in Hen’s voice, ad he wants to tell her that behind closed doors, he and Maddie are perfect. He spends their nights singing to her bump, they argue over what to name their daughter and behind closed doors, in the privacy of their home, it’s so absolutely perfect.</p><p>He’s the problem. He knows that much, Maddie would shout it from the rooftop and honestly, so would he if he didn’t think it would destroy Hen and Karen. But still, Maddie is sitting across the table, and her hand is on her stomach and despite how much she’s tried to hide it, there’s nothing more obvious in the world than a glowing mother-to-be.</p><p>“M-Maddie’s pregnant… and I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to hurt your feelings because you’ve both been… t-trying b-but I should have said something, I should have… told you and I’m an asshole because I’ve made Maddie hide what should be a great thing and, I’m just sorry, I messed up, I messed up so bad.”</p><p>He sees a lot of things on Hen’s face when he looks at her, although none of it is anger. “I-I think I kind of knew… I just didn’t bring it up because it hurt. But I think… I mean, Maddie looks amazing but… there’s no hiding that bump, Chimney. She’s tried, but…” There’s tears in her eyes as she talks and he <em>knows</em> he’s hurt her, and he hates himself for it but he’s also glad it’s out in the open.</p><p>“Do you hate me?”</p><p>“No, god no, I could never hate you. It’s been… a difficult few months, I’ve leaned on you a lot and if it were the other way around, I probably would have done the same.” They both know she would have definitely done the same, so it helps ease the tension in his shoulders just a little, just enough for him to take a deep breath. “I’m happy for you, I wish I could have been there for you. I wish things could have been different but…”</p><p>He looks over at Karen who looks about ready to burst into tears and there’s that stab of self-hatred all over again as he bites down on his lip and holds back his own tears. Instead, she presses a hand to each side of his face, giving him a small, watery smile, “It just wasn’t meant to be for us, don’t pretend not to be happy because of us. Hen and I are okay, we’re getting through it… we have a beautiful son and there’s other options, Chim, we have so much love to give and so do you and Maddie, so… we’re not mad, right, honey?”</p><p>Her wife eagerly nods her head, “Not mad, just sad that we’ve missed so much.”</p><p>Chimney understands, as he nods his head, “I know, I know but you’re going to be there for the most important part. Raising her.” He knows Hen has about a thousand questions, but they also know it’s not the time to ask them, not until it’s just the two of them. So, he takes a deep breath and stands up, moving over to his girlfriend with a whole new confidence, “Sorry, Buckaroo, I know it’s your big day and all but I think it’s time, don’t you?”</p><p>The two Buckley’s look up at him with similar expressions on their faces, and Buck is the first one to break out into a huge grin when Chimney easily pulls Maddie up to stand. Buck takes the only opportunity he has to be involved in the big announcement, clanging his fork a little too hard against the glass he’s holding in his hand, clearing his throat until everyone in the room is looking at him with expectant eyes. But it’s Chimney who speaks, before the uncle to be can get out the words he’s been longing to scream since he found out months before.</p><p>“Maddie and I are having a baby,” His hand is on her stomach, in public, in front of the people he loves, for the first time and he’s not sure he can feel any prouder or happier than he is right then. He keeps his focus on two of his best friends as he speaks, relieved to see no hatred or jealousy in their eyes before he focuses his attention on Maddie, in the flood of congratulations and shocked whispers.</p><p>“What made you tell them?”</p><p>“It was time, it was time weeks ago, but… seeing you there, so desperately trying to hide this amazing gift you’re giving me. It was right.”</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>